Letters to the Editor

Dear Editor,

The NRA is not a lobby to sell guns. It was founded in 1871 to promote marksmanship and did not get political until attacked by gun regulating liberals.

The AR style rifles are not assault rifles, they just look like them. They function the same as any other semiautomatic firearm. They are currently the most popular firearm for hunting and competitive shooting and are made by almost every manufacturer, Colt, Remington, Smith and Wesson to name a few. Although hunters do not need a thirty-round clip, competitive shooters use them. Assault rifles are fully automatic “machine guns” which have been illegal for about 80 years.

England and Australia are often brought up as having a much lower firearm death rate than the U.S., after they outlawed guns. They had a much lower rate before they outlawed guns. If guns alone were the problem, Switzerland and Israel should be on the top of the list, as most of the population has real assault rifles. The murder rate for Switzerland is 0.7 per 100,000 population; Israel is 2.1 per 100,000. The U.S. is 4.6 per 100,000. Some of the countries where guns are banned are Honduras 96.1, Colombia 33.4, Mexico 16.9 per 100,000.

If making guns illegal will make us safer, perhaps we should make drugs illegal.

Tom Burge

Manistique

Dear Editor,

The Upper Peninsula Sportsman Alliance is the voice of the UP Sportsman. We supported our legislators to make the wolf a game animal. Now we are in need of your help. We did not pursue this issue to create a hunting season, but to be able to control the wolf population and prevent wolf-human conflicts.

The Natural Resources Commission and the Department of Natural Resources are following the wolf management plan by studying wolf data, convening public forums, advisory councils and consulting with tribes.

The Natural Resources Commission is required to use sound science in wildlife management decisions, including whether or not to authorize a regulated hunt.

Out-of-state special interest and anti-hunting groups should not be able to dictate how Michigan manages our wildlife. If we do not control the wolf population, they and our problems will continue to grow.

Tony Demboski president, UPSA

Dear Editor,

Today in America the gun control debate rages on in the wake of several tragic mass shootings that resulted in the loss of many lives. Are you be interested in the truth behind the agenda or are you content with the White House propaganda and spin?

For the past four years, Secretary Hillary Clinton has been working hard at the United Nations for ratification of a world-wide gun ban. In July of last year, 50 U.S. Senators sent a letter to President Obama stating the ban would violate the Second Amendment of the Constitution. Facing an upcoming election, and fearing the response from Republicans, and campaign attacks from presidential challenger Mitt Romney, the president, and Secretary Clinton opposed the vote on the treaty stating “It might threaten or restrict the rights of law-abiding American gun owners” (NRA-ILA).

Within hours of his re-election the president declared his support for the U.N. treaty he had previously opposed. It had nothing to do with the tragic school shootings. The recent signing of 23 executive orders calling for an assault weapons ban, back ground checks, and health record checks is a sham, and the children who stood behind him were nothing more than stage scenery designed to elicit an emotional response. He wants you to believe he’s doing it for the children (NRAILA).

The president’s doing it for the Chinese, and Russians who oppose the U.N. treaty, because of its restriction on arms trading, but support the disarmament of America. With Obama’s re-election, the Chinese sent a letter to the U.N. publically stating that they were upset that 50 percent of the world civilian owned guns are owned by the Americans. This treaty is designed to remove weapons from the world’s civilian population, prevent nation states from supplying small arms, and weapons to other countries. It would restrict the U.S. from supplying aid to nations we support like Israel, Korea and Taiwan or any nation we decide are in need of support to fight their dictators. In 1999, China publically stated that retaking Taiwan is its “last order of business” having lost it to the Nationalist Chinese after WWII. If we are prohibited from supplying arms to Taiwan, then China can attack them without fear of a long war. We would be prohibited from supplying Israel, because it would violate the U.N. treaty. A treaty Russia and China won’t think twice about violating when supplying those they support.

Do you believe that your Second Amendment rights are going to stand in the way of global agenda? Eventually, they will be taken unless we continue to remind our elected leaders they represent us, and serve at our pleasure.

Unfortunately, we have become a debtor nation, our government beholding to those that buy our national debt. Stop believing the government is your friend or is here to help you. Fight for your right to “keep and bear arms” and don’t allow your rights to be dictated without your consent.

Kevin Pfister

Manistique

Dear Editor,

The gun discussion keeps coming up with the idea that we don’t need such and such for hunting. If you would take time to research the Second Amendment, you will find that it does not mention hunting, it says that we have the right to keep and bear arms for our defense and the defense of the Constitution! Please see more of the discussion by the framers:

“Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in most every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive,” Noah Webster, “An Examination of the Leading Principal of the Federal Constitution” (Philadelphia 1787).

“Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom? Congress has no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American… The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust it will ever remain, in the hands of the people,” Tenche Coxe, The Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788.

Citizens, please pay attention to what some of our politicians are trying to do to us! A saying that many of my veteran friends and I take as a furtherance of our pledge to defend the Constitution is; “I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees!”